Half Empty (First Wives #2)

“Sweetheart?” His mother was all syrup and smiles once he put an end to her rant about Trina.

“I’m good, Mama. Just a checkup. No time to go into town.” Wade blew past his mother and shook the doctor’s hand. “Let’s step into my office.”

House calls were a nice perk of his fame.

By eight o’clock that night, Charles had called with a clean bill of health, and Wade was on the phone, saying good night to Trina.

“You sound even sexier over the phone,” he told her.

“I’ve been practicing all day.”

“My doctor just called, and I’m all checked out.”

“That was quick.”

“Important things are taken care of first.”

Trina laughed.

“I’ll be happy to stock up on more supplies for when I’m back from Vegas.” He secretly hoped she wouldn’t encourage him to glove up. He hadn’t forgotten what unlatexed lovin’ felt like, even though it wasn’t something he did very often in his life. Especially since he’d broken the top one hundred on the charts.

“Like I told you, I have an IUD. I’m happy to get a copy of my last bloodwork if you want to see it.”

“I trust you.” More than anyone else he’d been with. “But why the IUD, if you weren’t sleeping with Fedor?”

“I was a flight attendant. Periods got in the way.”

“That makes sense.”

“I’ll let you decide,” she told him. “I might be provoked to hunt you down if you didn’t come back, but I would never trap you.”

He shivered. “That was both exciting and a little terrifying, all in the same sentence.”

“How so?”

“Exciting to see you hunting me down. Would you dress like that woman in the hotel room, Catwoman?”

“Sasha?” Trina laughed. “I don’t think I could pull that off.”

“I disagree. I might buy you the outfit just to find out.”

“Harboring fantasies about her, are you?”

“Just the outfit. Not the woman.” Wade propped his stocking feet up on his bed and relaxed against his headboard.

“So what’s the terrifying part?”

He gave his head a quick shake. “The reality that I wouldn’t mind you trapping me.”

He heard her suck in a breath. “Wade . . .”

“Too soon?”

“No, I just . . . I’m not taking you up on that. There will be no accidents that force us together. You’re gonna have to want it and stick around to see if it works.”

“Should I get in my truck right now and show you just how much it works?”

“When you’re back from Vegas.”

Vegas couldn’t come and go too soon.



Ruslan threw a crystal glass across the room and took brief satisfaction in it shattering into a thousand pieces on the floor.

He looked at his phone again. Saw an image he knew was out there but had been told was destroyed.

Now they had it.

They . . . the collective clusterfuck that was on him like maggots on rotted flesh.

Natasha had tried to blackmail him.

Him!

In Natasha’s attempts to blackmail him, Alice had gained her freedom by catching him in the act of removing that pizda from this earth. His wife was wise enough to know that she, and her son, would be dead if she said a thing to anyone. So when he’d gone to Fedor’s that night just over a year ago to sway him to his side, he’d learned that not only did Fedor not know about Natasha, he’d also turned into a tryapka.

No son of his could be that weak.

He’d put up a fight. Even had a gun, which Ruslan had put to good use.

Everything had been sewn up.

All the ends neatly tied.

Until his daughter-in-law came back.

Now everything was falling apart, and if he didn’t get his hands a little dirty, everything would be destroyed.



“The woman in the pictures was Natasha Budanov, the same name written on the back.”

“Russian.” Trina now had a name to go with the face of the dead woman whose killer was still free. “How was she connected to Ruslan, outside of the fact he killed her?”

Reed spoke to her on a secure line.

“They were lovers, from what I can tell. She lived in Germany. He would visit her when he was there.”

“She didn’t look old enough to acquire a taste for a monster like him.”

“He had money, and she was just short of a hooker.”

“What do you mean?”

“She had a prior of burglary while she was servicing a man.”

“Servicing?” Trina winced.

“Prostitution isn’t as frowned upon in other parts of the world as it is here. Have you been to Amsterdam?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so you know. Jacking the john for his wallet is a bigger deal. Natasha was pretty enough to avoid the streets, but she liked money. I can only assume Ruslan paid her well enough to keep her as a mistress.”

There wasn’t enough money in the world.

“Did her death go unnoticed?”

“Virtually. But then, Ruslan was a mist in her bedroom that faded when the sun came up. The only person willing to part with information was a friend in the same field as Natasha that still lived in the same town.”

“How on earth did you find her?”

“We have boots on the ground where Natasha lived. With a picture of the woman and a wad of euros, people talk. Our source had a picture of Natasha and herself back when they were both working on their backs. Natasha’s friend gave up the profession after Natasha’s death. We dug a little deeper and found the prior in the database and connected the dots. Miss Budanov was found dead on the rocks off a cliff. It was labeled a suicide.”

Fedor’s image flashed in Trina’s head. “That sounds all too familiar.”

“We thought so, too. One more thing.”

“I’m listening.”

“Natasha had a child.”

The blood fell from Trina’s face. “Ruslan’s?”

“We’re not sure. Locating her is proving more difficult than finding the mom.”

“A girl?”

“That’s what our source told us.”

“Fedor had a sister?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Natasha wasn’t an exclusive woman. We would need a paternity test to prove it. With Fedor dead and Ruslan unavailable to swab, we may never know. But we are looking. The question really needs to be, Did Alice know about the child? Did Fedor? Sasha said she found the papers in Fedor’s office, but did she find all of them? Or did Alice give them to her?”

“Why don’t you just ask her? Doesn’t Sasha contact you?”

“Whenever she’s damn good and ready, she will. Until then, I’m out of luck.”

Trina hung her head, gripped the phone. “Let me get this straight. You can find a woman who is what, dead twenty years?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five years,” Trina continued. “But Stealth Woman in a black leotard remains elusive?”

“Yup. Pretty much.” Reed held no guilt in the tone of his voice.

“Should I be impressed?”

“Hell yeah. I am. So is Neil, and you know that man never cracks a smile.”

Neil never talked, let alone smiled.

“What about the box in Arizona?”

“Empty.”

“Who is it registered to?”

Reed started laughing. “Buddy Nash.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Buddy Nash. Move the name around, take away a few letters . . . sounds a whole lot like Natasha Budanov, doesn’t it?”

Trina squeezed the bridge of her nose. “You know, I really wish I had known Alice longer.”

“I can do you one better. I wish I had known her at all.”



Following Ruslan in Mexico City was a hell of a lot easier than in a graveyard in Texas. With her dark hair, dark eyes, and the ability to speak the language, she fooled the locals. She added a fake mole to her cheek and made sure it matched the one on the bogus passport she carried, and waltzed around in big sunglasses and red-hot lipstick on her lips.

She lost Ruslan inside the hotel but followed him with her bug on his phone. She was making herself comfortable in the lobby when Zakhar walked past her and out the doors of the four-star establishment.

Zakhar was on a mission.

Instead of holding back, Sasha followed.